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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Learning Journal',
	'<{subtitle}>' => 'PSYC 1111: Introduction to Health Psychology (previously known as Introduction to Human Psychology)',
	'<{copyright year}>' => '2018',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<section id="Unit1">
	<h2>Unit 1</h2>
	<p>
		Unfortunately, two of the three reading assignments were hosted on a third-party website that was blocking me.
		I mentioned this in the forum and the professor said to try again and let them know if it was still blocking me.
		I responded, but never got a response back.
		So I wasn&apos;t able to read two thirds of the material as I wasn&apos;t able to access it.
		For that reason, I&apos;ll focus on the one reading assignment I did have access to: the one hosted on the university&apos;s own website, which doesn&apos;t block me.
	</p>
	<p>
		The material seemed to focus on two major themes.
		First, that our understanding of the link between mind and body has changed over the past while.
		We can of course assume that this understanding will continue to grow and evolve as time and science progress.
		Second, that the state of the mind affects the state of the body.
		Neither of these concepts changed my understanding.
		Although people try to use things such as patents and secrecy to hold back competitors, which in turn holds back science as a whole, science will still find a way to march on, even if at a much slower pace than it could if we worked together instead of against one another.
		Our understanding of everything is improving at some rate, and the brain/body link is no exception.
		As for the mind affecting the body, I experience that all the time, and I think anyone who actually pays attention to their mental and physical state does.
		When we&apos;re depressed, we don&apos;t have the energy to move, even though nothing besides the mind seems like it&apos;d be holding us back.
		When we&apos;re excited, we seem to be able to do a lot more than usual, even pushing ourselves beyond the point of exhaustion.
		And then there&apos;s the medical case of placebos.
		The brain obviously has a lot of control over the state of the body.
		And is it any wonder?
		The brain is the control centre.
		While it can&apos;t cause the body to do more than it&apos;s physically capable of, it can obviously hold the body back.
		It&apos;s been proven that our bodies don&apos;t operate at full capacity all the time, so by tapping into some of that unused potential, the mind can make us able to push past our perceived limits and reach closer to our actual limits.
	</p>
	<p>
		The material also discussed the effect of social interactions on health.
		Most of this, I disagree with.
		I mean, I get what the book is getting at, but I don;t interpret it the same way.
		Social interaction, if we allow it, can alter our mental state and our behaviours, both of which influence our physical health, but in the end, it&apos;s still our mental state and behaviours that do the damage, not the social interaction.
		That said, I can sort of see why the book might simplify this into a claim that social interactions influence our health.
		I mean, toxic relationships can, indirectly, do a huge amount of damage to us physically.
		I&apos;ve never been susceptible myself to the peer-pressure-related type of damage, but I did grow up in a very toxic home environment with an over-controlling mother.
		I feel that I&apos;ve mostly recovered by now, but when I lived with her, I was pretty unhealthy in body and mind.
		I think the main takeaway form the book&apos;s interpretation is that relationships that cause us harm, directly or indirectly, need to either be repaired or severed.
		It&apos;s easier to look at this as direct damage, but even with the more-realistic view that the damage is indirect, it&apos;s still damage.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="Unit2">
	<h2>Unit 2</h2>
	<p>
		The textbook reading pretty much just covered definitions and obvious things this week.
		We covered that a health behaviour is a behaviour that impacts health and a health belief is a belief about how to impact health.
		We also covered statistics such as the percentage of cancers that are believed to be preventable.
		We also covered that people that think something is within their ability to control are more likely to change than those who place the blame outside themself.
		Again, rather obvious.
	</p>
	<p>
		Something I&apos;ve known for quite a while, but never understood, is that people often don&apos;t think bad things can happen to them.
		An example given by the book is smokers who smoke because they don&apos;t think cancer will happen to them.
		This is the exact opposite of my belief system.
		Personally, I&apos;m ultra paranoid.
		Anything that can go wrong probably will.
		And usually, I&apos;m right.
		When I most need things to go right, they never do.
		So I would never take pointless risks such as smoking or drinking.
		I&apos;ve never touched a cigarette or alcoholic beverage in my life, and I don&apos;t plan to.
		For that matter, I don&apos;t eve touch drugs others think are no big deal.
		I don&apos;t take acetaminophen when I have a headache, for example.
		I wait it out and endure.
		I&apos;m the extreme polar opposite of those that think they can&apos;t be hurt by anything.
		I know I&apos;ll be hurt.
		It&apos;s just a matter of when, by what, and to what extent.
		So I minimise foolish risks.
		I mean, I&apos;m not afraid to step outside my apartment or anything crazy like that.
		I frequently bike to the next town over on my days off just to feel the rush of it and to pass the time.
		(Not that I have many days off when school&apos;s on session, but between terms, I like to go out.)
		But I don&apos;t feel a need to ingest poison, like many people do, and kill myself off that way.
		Unrealistic optimism?
		I&apos;ve never understood it.
		I&apos;ve got a healthy dose of pessimism.
		Sometimes even an unhealthy dose.
	</p>
	<p>
		Belief in oneself can be a powerful thing, but it isn&apos;t always enough.
		A great example of this would be my attempts to become ambidextrous.
		I thought I could do it.
		I mean, there are people that lose their good hand due to accident.
		They adapt.
		Clearly the &quot;bad hand&quot; can become a good hand.
		There are also cases in which someone breaks their good arm, putting it out of commission for many months, and they switch arms.
		Interestingly enough, once healed, <strong>*some of these people don&apos;t switch back*</strong>.
		My interpretation of this was that they&apos; gotten used to using their other hand, and the other hand became dominant.
		Both hands had the latent capability to be highly functional.
		The evidence pointed toward the case that with practice, I could use whatever arm I chose.
		I think I used mainly my bad hand for about three years.
		I got <strong>*really*</strong> good with it.
		I thought I&apos;d brought it up to par with my right hand, though I started having speech issues.
		I couldn&apos;t come up with the words I needed much of the time.
		Which hand you use supposedly has an effect on the brain, and I thought maybe I was messing with the language centre of my brain by trying to pump words out through my left hand (through handwriting).
		I gave up writing with my left hand, found my right hand was still about three times as fast at writing, and the cramps I got from writing with my left hand weren&apos;t present in my right hand.
		I hadn&apos;t become ambidextrous after all.
		I was still right-handed.
		My speech issues cleared up fairly quickly when I stopped writing with my left hand, and I still use both hands interchangeably for all non-writing tasks.
		I believed I could do it though, and that wasn&apos;t enough.
		My brain just isn&apos;t structured to use both hands to their fullest extent.
		Still, there was marked improvement.
		I wasn&apos;t using my left hand to the full extent my brain could handle, and now I think I am.
		I&apos;m glad to have tried that little experiment; it left me in a better state than when I started.
	</p>
	<p>
		People think believe can help you bypass your limits.
		I believe the opposite.
		We have unsurpassable limits built into us.
		Beliefs that we can&apos;t do something add more limitations to us.
		When we believe that we can, it only removes the limitations our own beliefs put on us to begin with.
		It doesn&apos;t remove any of the real limitations we ever had.
		Self-efficacy gives us the strength to give it our best try.
		It doesn&apos;t give us what we need to always succeed.
	</p>
	<p>
		The book mentions fear as the emotional motivation to act on health beliefs as part of the protection motivation theory model, but I don&apos;t think that&apos;s the only emotion with a part to play.
		For example, what about love?
		What if you&apos;re not afraid of health conditions, but you want to be in better condition because you think your partner deserves better?
		Or you want to set a better example for your family?
		What about hope, excitement, and enthusiasm?
		What if you don&apos;t fear health complications because you&apos;re in decent enough shape, but if you were in even better shape, you feel like you could accomplish so much more?
		For me, I&apos;ve changed my diet recently and am losing weight, and it&apos;s not for any of those reason.
		It&apos;s out of shame, which is yet another emotional motivator.
		I have a large gut and it makes me look like a man, which I decidedly am not.
		I&apos;m tired of looking like one.
		No; fear isn&apos;t the only emotional motivator for acting on health beliefs.
	</p>
	<p>
		The theory of planned behaviour capitalises on this better by not directly addressing emotion.
		The attitude component addresses motivation for oneself.
		This captures the shame and hope I mentioned, as well as fear and probably other emotions.
		The subjective norm component captures love, among other things.
	</p>
	<p>
		The social learning in terms of diet was interesting to read about.
		It was amusing though that it predicts that children will eat like their parents after moving out.
		My mother is a big meat eater though.
		Yet two of her four children won&apos;t touch the stuff.
		I don&apos;t touch animal products in general, while one of my siblings will only touch animal products that aren&apos;t part of a corpse.
		(For example, they drink milk and eat honey, but they don&apos;t eat meat, lard, or gelatin.)
		Another lives with one of the two that doesn&apos;t eat meat, so they don&apos;t eat meat at home, so they don&apos;t eat much either.
		The fourth child still lives with our mother, so we can&apos;t yet examine their post-move-out eating habits.
	</p>
	<p>
		The effect on food preference of the presence of reward foods and access foods was interesting as well.
		The reward food becomes more desired, while the access food becomes less so.
		So to encourage healthy eating in the long run, you need to tell them they can have vegetables if they eat all their pudding?
		In theory, if you can get them to want to eat vegetables in the first place, you could then increase their preference for vegetables while also decreasing their preference for sweets.
		Good luck putting (&quot;pudding&quot;?) that in practice though.
	</p>
	<p>
		Near the end of the reading assignment, the book gets into the weight concern model, which exactly explains my own recent dieting.
		According to the book, it&apos;s mostly women that are motivated by weight concerns.
		I wouldn&apos;t have guessed that.
		Personally, I&apos;m a queer.
		That&apos;s why my name is Alex.
		I&apos;m both an Alexander and and Alexandra, while at the same time, not really fully either one.
		It&apos;s been scientifically proven that non-queer males and non-queer females have different brain structures.
		It&apos;s also been proven that queer brains show characteristics of both brain types.
		So basically, we&apos;re queer because our brains are part male and part female.
		It sounds like my body image issues are more likely to come from my feminine side than my masculine side, from what the book says.
		It also explains how dieters can&apos;t give in and &quot;eat just one&quot; of something.
		If we do, we&apos;ll eat the whole box.
		I&apos;m glad to know it&apos;s not just me that&apos;s like that.
		I guess that&apos;s cruel, as I&apos;m sort of wishing that on other people, but it means it&apos;s not some horrid quirk in me specifically.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="Unit3">
	<h2>Unit 3</h2>
	<p>
		Just like two weeks ago, we were asked to get some information from the <code>www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov</code> website.
		And just like before, that website is blocking me, leaving me unable to access part of the reading assignment.
	</p>
	<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./coursework/PSYC1111/error2.png" alt="Access denied" class="framed-centred-image" width="819" height="774"/>
	<p>
		Thankfully, it didn&apos;t interfere with my discussion forum submission this week, as we were required to cite only two of our assigned readings, and only one of our three for the week was hosted by this website that blocks me.
		However, I can&apos;t help but fear that by missing this part of the reading, I&apos;m missing material that we&apos;re going to be tested on.
	</p>
	<p>
		The idea of modelling is something I&apos;ve thought about before, but have never had a name for.
		The concept is that you surround yourself with people with desirable qualities, so as to copy them and reinforce these desirable qualities yourself.
		For the time being, I feel trapped in my current situation.
		I don&apos;t think I can escape to somewhere in which I can actually surround myself with good people.
		It&apos;s in my plans though.
		At the end of this term, I&apos;ll have my associate degree.
		With it, I plan to find a less toxic job.
		It won&apos;t be great, but it should be much better than where I work now.
		I;ll keep that job while I continue working on my bachelor degree, and once I complete that, maybe I&apos;ll manage to find a job I can enjoy and be proud of.
		As for my home, I&apos;m trapped here for the time being as well, though this home is a much healthier place to be than any home I&apos;ve had before.
		It was pretty bad in the past.
		I used to live with my toxic mother, but now I live alone; and it&apos;s wonderful.
	</p>
	<p>
		Reinforcement is a widely-known technique, even by those that for the most part don&apos;t know what they&apos;re doing, so I wpn&apos;t go into detail about it.
		Basically, when you&apos;re rewarded for your actions, you&apos;re more likely to repeat them.
		This includes self-reward.
	</p>
	<p>
		Association is interesting.
		You try to link behaviours to different thoughts and feelings.
		The book recommends using it to try to promote going outside, but when school is in session, I don;t have time to go outside.
		And when school&apos;s not in session, I often go on hours-long bike rides.
		I don&apos;t think I really need to convince myself to go out when time actually allows.
		More usefully - to me, at least - the book recommends using it to promote good dieting habits.
		It recommends putting photographs of various associated things near foods of different types.
		I think that could be very effective for me.
		Unfortunately, I don&apos;t own a working printer.
		When time allows, which probably won&apos;t be for a while, I should find some {$a['CC BY']} or {$a['CC BY-SA']} photos and take them to the local library to print.
	</p>
	<p>
		Cognitive behaviour therapy is the practice of trying to find evidence to oppose false beliefs.
		I didn&apos;t know there was a name for it, but I guess it&apos;s something I use on myself on a fairly regular basis.
		I&apos;m working on purging the sense of worthlessness my mother instilled in me from an early age.
		I&apos;ve made great progress, though I still put far too much emphasis on what others think in several types of situations.
		I&apos;m a work in progress, but I&apos;m getting there.
	</p>
	<p>
		The recommended remedy for the abstinence violation effect is ... disturbing, to say the least.
		Basically, the premise is to get the person that chose to lapse to blame not themself, but some outside factor.
		It&apos;s still completely their fault though.
		If I eat a cookie, even though I know I&apos;m fat and I&apos;m on a diet, I did so by my own choice.
		It was very much my own fault.
		To say otherwise is to lie to myself.
		While I get that this strategy might help a lot of people avoid a total relapse, it&apos;d never work on me.
		I analyse everything, whether I want to or not.
		It&apos;s just in my nature.
		Even if I pretend to blame some scapegoat, I&apos;ll still know that it was I that did it.
		That I&apos;m to blame.
	</p>
	<p>
		The concept of a psychological contract is something I make use of myself, in the form of my journal.
		I often make plans in it, and I admit to it anything of significance that I do.
		Previously, my journal was public too, though the more recent pages aren&apos;t visible to the public because the university is currently censoring them.
		Still, come 2023, the entirety of my journal will become public once more, as per the terms given to me by the school.
		Eventually, everything I&apos;ve done and will have done in these four years will be open for anyone that cares to read.
	</p>
	<p>
		The strategy of using fear to cause desired behaviour seems to have a different effect on me than on others.
		Apparently, most people block out the message in such cases.
		For me, it tends to scare me far away from the source of the feared object.
		For example, I took a glasswork course in high school.
		We were told the tools were dangerous, and examples of injuries we could receive if we didn&apos;t treat the tools with respect were discussed.
		We were thus informed, and we did our best to be careful.
		This class was incredibly fun, and I kept coming back, term after term, for more.
		I even spent three lunch periods each week in the glass room.
		I&apos;d&apos;ve spent <strong>*all*</strong> my lunch periods there, but the teacher wanted two lunch periods each week not having to keep an eye on students, which was more than fair.
		They didn&apos;t have to give us any of their lunch periods, but they gave us over half of them.
		However, I also took a wood shop course.
		On the first day, we were shown a horrible video that actually <strong>*showed*</strong> us what could happen if we didn&apos;t treat the tools with respect.
		Instead of informing us, the goal was to <strong>*scare*</strong> us.
		It worked on me.
		Really well.
		I spent the whole term in fear, just waiting for the course to end.
		And when it did, I never came back.
		Seriously: fear is not a tactic you use to change or control my behaviour.
		It&apos;s a tactic you use to make me flee.
		Well, I suppose making me flee is a change to my behaviour that you might control by having caused it, but it&apos;s probably not the desired change in most cases.
	</p>
	<p>
		The other reading assignment for the week went into great detail about a study conducted to see if financial incentive was effective at changing a person&apos;s behaviour.
		As we discussed above, incentive is effective in behavioural change, so it shouldn&apos;t come as a surprise that monetary incentive, a subset of incentive in general, would be effective.
		I&apos;m not sure exactly what we were supposed to learn from this study.
		I mean, the scientist wanted to see how effective it was and try to quantify it, but this level of detail deems beyond what we as students can gain from our study.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="Unit4">
	<h2>Unit 4</h2>
	<p>
		The book suggests that coping is an attempt to return to a state of normalcy, but also claims ignoring or avoiding a problem is a way to cope.
		These can&apos;t both be true.
		If you avoid a problem instead of making an attempt at fixing it, you&apos;re not attempting to get back to your normal state.
		You&apos;re trying to pretend you never left it!
		I would say coping is an attempt to deal with a problem, but not necessarily try to get back to your normal state.
		I mean, pretending there is no problem is a way to react to and deal with a problem, even though it&apos;s not a way to fix the problem or get back to a normal state.
		It&apos;s not a very <strong>*healthy*</strong> way to deal with a problem, but it is technically a way.
	</p>
	<p>
		The book mentions the fact that different people consider different levels of various symptoms, such as breathlessness or pain, to be normal.
		This results in people not telling their doctors about some symptoms because they just write them off.
		There&apos;s an inverse to that too though.
		My family doesn&apos;t really complain about pain much.
		So when we complain, there really is something wrong.
		However, because other people complain more readily, we sometimes get written off because it&apos;s not believed that we&apos;re in as much pain as we are.
		A prime example of this was one time when my mother was pregnant.
		Contractions had gone into full force.
		She told the doctors repeatedly, and they kept writing her off, but eventually they hooked her up to a machine that measures contractions.
		The needle was up off the chart.
		She wasn&apos;t just experiencing the mini &quot;practice&quot; contractions that the doctors kept insisting she was!
	</p>
	<p>
		Another issue covered was the costs and benefits of doctoral visits.
		It mentioned embarrassment, though I&apos;ve never really had that issue when dealing with a doctor.
		It&apos;s just their job, and they&apos;ve already seen and heard it all before.
		The book also mentioned costs in the form of time though.
		That&apos;s one of the major reasons I don&apos;t see a doctor often.
		There&apos;s just no time in the day to fit that in.
	</p>
	<p>
		I like how the book addresses the fact that doctors are just people too, and while they are highly trained, they still have their own biases.
		Their job is also complicated, which adds more possibility of error.
		Many people seem to think doctors are omniscient wizards or something, but it doesn&apos;t work that way.
		Earning a doctorate doesn&apos;t grant you magical powers.
		The process of diagnosis was covered, but it was basically just the method you use to do anything scientific.
		You gather the information you can, through examination, testing, and questioning the patient.
		Then you form your hypothesis and test it.
		The field of medicine is well-grounded in science, so it makes perfect sense such a logical process would be used.
		However, doctors do have a confirmation bias, so when trying to prove their theory, they&apos;ll lean more toward gathering information that would prove them right, rather than wrong.
		Different doctors may give different diagnoses too, depending on several factors, such as their personal biases.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="Unit5">
	<h2>Unit 5</h2>
	<p>
		The contrast between the main effect hypothesis and the stress-buffering hypothesis of why people need social interaction is interesting.
		I&apos;m more inclined to believe the main effect hypothesis though.
		Simply put, humans are a species that has evolved to be social.
		We don&apos;t do well in isolation specifically because we are genetically programmed to seek companionship.
		If the stress-buffering hypothesis held true and the main effect hypothesis did not, I don&apos;t see why people in isolation would go nuts after a while.
		In such extreme cases, we can see that the lack of social interaction is the major stressor that leads to the mental breakdown.
		That said, I do think social interaction has stress-buffering characteristics in many cases.
		But it&apos;s our genetic need for social interaction that acts as the main driving force behind the stress in not having a support network.
	</p>
	<p>
		The book suggests that soldiers request pain medication less than civilians, and that this must be due to injury holding a positive meaning for them: it represents the end of their dangerous and stressful service period.
		This may very well be true, but the book also claims that this meaning causes soldiers to experience the pain less, which is the ultimate cause of them not requesting medication.
		I think this is a bit of a stretch.
		Take me for example.
		I refuse pain medication as well.
		One time when I had teeth removed, I was in so much pain I couldn&apos;t get out of bed for long, as if I did, the pain would make my head spin and I&apos;d become nauseous.
		Would you say that I was refusing medication because I wasn&apos;t feeling the pain as much as other people?
		I wouldn&apos;t!
		Many people even take medication for light headaches.
		The absence of requests for pain medication do not imply that pain isn&apos;t felt or is felt to a lesser degree.
		Some people, such as myself, are just stubborn.
		Others, have a high tolerance for pain, but they still feel it.
		I imagine many soldiers have learned to get through pain without drugs during their service.
		There&apos;s also psychological factors such as distraction that lessen pain.
		Trauma from war may very well be lessening the pain with or without the pain having any special meaning.
		And even if the full pain is felt, the soldier may recognise that this is the last major physical pain they&apos;re likely to feel and just deal with it, knowing it&apos;ll be over when they heal.
		There are so many possibilities that it seems like bad science to simply jump to the conclusion that soliers feel less pain because the pain holds meaning to them.
	</p>
	<p>
		Phantom limb pain is said by the book to not have any physical basis, but again, this seems like quite a leap.
		The simple fact is that there are nerves leading to where the limb used to be, and these nerves are designed to cary signals such as pain.
		Things can happen to parts of the nerves existing in part of the body that wasn&apos;t lost, and it could easily be interpreted by the brain as pain in the missing limb.
		A great example of this is that even in patients without missing limbs, problems in the back, where the spinal cord is located, often feel pain in other parts of their bodies.
		The nerves in the spine carry the pain signal, but it appears to the brain that the signal is coming from further along the nerve path than it really is.
		All pain is really felt in the brain, not the rest of our bodies, so if the brain makes a mistake as to where the pain should be felt as coming from, you get odd results like that.
		The actual limb where the pain is felt isn&apos;t even involved in such cases.
		Because the limb isn&apos;t involved, it need not even still exist.
		Therefore, if the limb is missing, it&apos;ll be experienced as phantom limb pain.
		These pains still have a very physical cause though: agitation of nerves in a remaining body part; probably either the spine or some part between the spine and the missing limb.
		When limbs are lost, there&apos;s a lot of damage done to the tissue, so I suspect crossed nerves are a semi-frequent occurrence.
		It&apos;s very probable that some phantom limb pains are completely psychological, but it&apos;s even more likely that at least some phantom limb pains have a very physical cause.
		Absence of the limb doesn&apos;t mean absence of physical cause.
	</p>
	<p>
		The section on why distraction reduces pain was quite enlightening.
		Our brains are natural computers, and suffer from limited resources.
		Processing feelings, such as pain, takes some of their available processing power.
		By putting their processing power toward another activity, our brains are forced to discontinue tasks not being focused on.
		Basically, we can avoid feeling pain by taking advantage of our brain&apos;s limited resources and overloading it with another task or tasks.
		It then has no choice but to drop the task of producing the sensation of pain.
		It also explains why people that are missing a sense (such as vision) have enhanced capabilities with another sense (such as hearing).
		I&apos;d assumed it was an adaption by the brain to compensate; a survival tactic.
		It looks like I was probably wrong though.
		Instead, it&apos;s likely caused by the missing sense not taxing the brain&apos;s resources.
		With the brain not needing to process the missing data, it&apos;s able to instead put more resources toward processing data from senses that still exist.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="Unit6">
	<h2>Unit 6</h2>
	<p>
		The book suggests that as the body mass index of a person increases, the role of genetics in their obesity decreases.
		It doesn&apos;t seem to draw any conclusions from this, but I think one obvious conclusion should be pointed out: environment has a bigger effect on obesity than genetics does, but at the lower limit of the environmentally-induced weight spectrum, genetics likely prevents people people from dipping much below some inherited threshold.
		To put it more simply, perhaps genetics don&apos;t make people fat.
		Rather, genetics keep people from being thin.
		On the other hand, environmental conditions can make you fat or keep you from being fat, but they won&apos;t make you thin if you&apos;re genetically programmed to not be thin.
		This is only speculation on my part though.
	</p>
	<p>
		Three ways to lose weight are mentioned by the book: behaviour modification, medication, and surgery.
		I was unaware that medication was an option.
		It doesn&apos;t really make a difference to me though, I suppose.
		I fear drugs too much to try them for weight loss except perhaps as a last resort.
		I&apos;m making such good progress using only diet change (a form of behaviour modification), so it&apos;s just not going to come down to needing drugs.
		Besides, the book suggests there&apos;s a threshold at which doctors won&apos;t prescribe such medications any more (anywhere below a $a[BMI] of 30), and I&apos;m probably below that now.
		I&apos;m still fat enough that I need to continue my efforts, but not so fat that I can&apos;t function.
		One of the drugs seems to be to suppress appetite.
		In my own strategy, instead of suppressing my appetite, I&apos;ve been eating a lot of fibre.
		I&apos;m still putting a lot into my body, it&apos;s just that now a lot more than before is coming back out.
		I wasn&apos;t sure that&apos;d work so well at first, but I can&apos;t argue with the results I&apos;m seeing.
		The other drug is used to reduce fat absorption.
		For that, I&apos;ve been trying to intake less fat that can get absorbed in the first place.
		I guess I probably still absorb some fat because I don&apos;t have a perfect diet, but again, I seem to be losing fat quicker than I&apos;m gaining it.
		The drugs might help some people, but I&apos;d rather just continue my efforts without them.
		Besides, it sounds like the drugs come with a bunch of nasty side effects that I don&apos;t need.
	</p>
	<p>
		For the most part, I already knew what the book had to say about coronary heart disease&apos;s causes, though I didn&apos;t know that type A people are more likely to get it.
		I guess I can add that to the list of reasons I&apos;m glad I&apos;m not a type A.
		I still have a couple risk factors though: stress and obesity.
		The book suggests that it&apos;s diet that&apos;s a factor, not obesity, though I&apos;d argue it&apos;s probably both.
		The problem, as admitted by the book, is high cholesterol.
		A thin person with a poor diet may have high cholesterol in their bloodstream.
		And while I have improved my diet and am getting thinner, the fact that I&apos;m fat means I likely still have a lot of cholesterol in me that has yet to get used up and expelled.
		As I burn my fat, it&apos;s likely needing to pass through the bloodstream to get to the parts of my body that are using it, resulting in that cholesterol being in my blood.
		At least, that&apos;s my hypothesis.
	</p>
	<p>
		It looks like my risk for cancer is dropping.
		Depression and lack of a sense of control are a couple of the risk factors, both of which I experienced in high degree when I was living with my mother a couple years ago.
		I no longer have either though.
		Life has been looking up!
		My stress levels will likely go down too once I graduate form the university in a couple years.
		I used to enjoy the coursework, but since the censorship began, school has been incredibly stressful for me.
		I&apos;ve been working on reducing stress in other ways, too, such as fixing my ugly body.
		As my body improves through diet, so does my sense of control, my self-esteem and my body image, all of which are reducing stress.
		At the end of this term, I&apos;ll have my associate degree, and while I&apos;ll need to continue my schooling because I&apos;m aiming for a bachelor degree, the associate degree might help me find a better job.
		My current work environment is rather toxic, so it&apos;s relieve a lot of stress to be rid of the place, not to mention that my mother no linger knowing where I work means that she won&apos;t be able to pester me at work any more until our relationship improves and I tell her where I&apos;ve gone.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="Unit7">
	<h2>Unit 7</h2>
	<p>
		I am severely disappointed.
		I chose to take this course because the description claimed we&apos;d learn about the role of gender in health.
		We&apos;ve ignored that topic all term, and now that the term&apos;s close to ending, we&apos;re discussing the role of sex in health and <strong>*calling*</strong> it gender.
		I should have taken <span title="Introduction to Psychology">PSYC 1504</span> instead.
	</p>
	<p>
		Anyway, the first thing the textbook covered was hormonal differences.
		Again, hormones relate to sex, <strong>*not*</strong> gender.
		Sex is a description of what&apos;s between your legs.
		Gender is a description of what&apos;s in your mind.
		It&apos;s been medically proven that people of different genders have physically-different brain configurations.
		Masculine and feminine brains show the most contrast, with queer brains in the middle, showing traits associated with both masculine and feminine brains.
		However, many people don&apos;t seem to recognise the difference between sex and gender, and this textbook shows that its author is one of the many who fail to even realise the two aren&apos;t in fact synonyms.
	</p>
	<p>
		I think I summed up the reading material nicely in my discussion main discussion post for the week.
		Well, the material from the textbook, anyway.
		We once again had a reading assignment on that website that blocks me, so I was unable to read that material.
		Aside from where the book was dead wrong (that is, attributing hormones to gender, when they&apos;re really much more related to sex), it boiled down to one main point: men and women act differently.
		Some of these different actions come from the different ways men and women naturally think, but most of it comes from how men and women are <strong>*conditioned by society*</strong> to think and behave differently.
		Regardless of a person&apos;s sex of gender, different lifestyle choices result in different health conditions, so if men and women are conditioned to act differently than one another, they&apos;re bound to have different health issues crop up.
	</p>
	<p>
		In particular, men are conditioned not to show weakness and not to seek help.
		This results in two major results.
		First, men don&apos;t get the help they could really use in living healthier, longer lives.
		Second, men are more used to a state of discomfort and pain, so they perceive this state as the norm from which they make other judgements.
		Women, on the other hand, do seek help, so they tend to live longer.
		They report more symptoms of illness than men, but they&apos;re actually <strong>*healthier*</strong> than men.
		Not only are they not trying to hide their symptoms in an attempt to not show weakness, they&apos;re also more aware of their symptoms because they&apos;re used to an increased level of health, and are therefore basing their judgements compared to this state, instead of the lower health that men tend to perceive as the norm.
		Not only are women not discouraged from seeking help, they&apos;re actively <strong>*encouraged*</strong> to do what it takes to maintain their bodies properly.
		This puts women at a serious advantage when it comes to health and wellness.
	</p>
	<p>
		It&apos;s worth noting though, once more, that half the reading material was hosted on that website that blocks me.
		I had no chance to read this material, so hopefully it didn&apos;t cover anything too important.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="Unit8">
	<h2>Unit 8</h2>
	<p>
		The concept of mortality rates is pretty straightforward.
		They get corrected by some relevant denominator, which makes sense and makes the statistic more meaningful.
	</p>
	<p>
		Morbidity rates seem a bit odd, as far as the name goes.
		Why are they called morbidity rates?
		They&apos;re a measure of how many people suffer from a given, not-necessarily-potent illness.
		For example, you could measure the morbidity rate of people suffering from the common cold, but the common cold isn&apos;t particularly morbid.
	</p>
	<p>
		Measures of functioning are a better assessment of a person&apos;s health, I think.
		I think it could use some work, but has the right idea in mind.
		For example, I might end up with a large scrape across my arm.
		I may still be able to perform all daily tasks, so the scrape doesn&apos;t alter my measures of functioning, but my quality of life is still lower until it has healed more.
	</p>
	<p>
		The paper on teleheath practices was not what I expected it to be.
		I assumed it&apos;d  talk about how effective it is and how more healthcare providers should provide the option.
		Having &quot;tele&quot; in the name, I assumed the primary remote interactions would be over the telephone, which gave me a bias against the paper before even reading it.
		I understand that the &quot;tele&quot; comes from &quot;telecommunication&quot; and that telephones aren&apos;t the only method of telecommunication, but my gut instinct jumps to the negative conclusion in this case.
		I assumed other methods of telecommunication would not be offered to the participants.
		One of my main issues with telephones is the attitude of people that have them.
		They assume that because most people have telephone service, <strong>*everyone*</strong> must have telephone service.
		Many businesses and organisations, both public and private, refuse to serve you  if you don&apos;t hand over a telephone number.
		Don&apos;t have one?
		Too bad.
		No service for you.
		For example, the $a[DMV] in my state refuses to issue me a drive test, and therefore refuses to issue me a driver license, because I don&apos;t have telephone service.
		What kind of idiotic reason is that!?
		So because I don&apos;t have a telephone line, I&apos;m not allowed to drive a motor vehicle.
	</p>
	<p>
		Anyway, I wasn&apos;t wrong that participants in the study were required to engage with their healthcare providers over the telephone, though the main way patients communicated with their doctors via a special monitoring machine instead.
		However, I <strong>*was*</strong> wrong that the study was highly in favour of pushing us toward a future where telephones are the main way we speak with our healthcare providers.
		While some improvement in health was demonstrated, the increase in observed health was <code>*negligible*</code>.
		It could have easily been caused by other factors, and even if it was in fact caused by telephoning the doctor, such negligible results don&apos;t justify pushing that setup on everyone.
		And that&apos;s not to mention that most of the communication happened over the type of device that could be connected to the Internet for patients that don&apos;t have telephone service (though they would need Internet service).
		It simply doesn&apos;t make sense to send one of these monitoring stations to everyone&apos;s home.
		Many patients wouldn&apos;t be able to afford them, and the devices are only able to transmit certain types of health data, making them only useful in very specific circumstances, such as when dealing with a diagnosed chronic illness.
		Those of us that choose to bike down to the doctors&apos; office and make appointments in person, then actually meet our doctors face-to-face on the date of our appointments have nothing to fear from the results of this study.
		In-person care isn&apos;t going away any time soon.
	</p>
</section>
END
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